Naxalism in India: Civil Services Mentor Magazine August 2013

The attack in southern Chhattisgarh this past May 25 has again raised questions — and some bogeys — about India’s internal conflicts and the place Maoist rebels occupy in this universe. What’s the situation? And what is likely to happen? The short answer is that over the past three to four years, Left-wing rebels led primarily by Communist Party of India (Maoist) have been severely depleted by the surrender, arrest or death of leaders and cadres. Pressured by the onslaught, often knee-jerk, of both central and various state governments, the Maoists’ effective area of combat has shrunk to southern Chhattisgarh and adjacent areas of western Maharashtra and southwest Odisha (known as Danda-karanya), Bihar, a few pockets in Jhark-h-and, a sliver of Andhra Pradesh. While it is an emphatic weakening, the area is still vast, and cadre numbers and abilities enough to inflict severe damage in areas of strength. The Dandakaranya zone, where the attack on May 25 took place, is both major Maoist sanctuary, and core laboratory for administration, education, healthcare and way of community living and economic activity run by the Janatana Sarkar, or people’s government. This remains among the most inaccessible and forbidding policing and combat terrains in the country. This is where top Maoist military leadership shelters. This is where some of the most battlehardened cadres are.

Naturally, this is also where most government forces combating Maoists are located. For Maoists, this region is also quite different from the rough and tumble in Bihar and Jharkhand where Maoist rebels have for long been less concerned with trying to provide an alternate grassroots model; because of what can be called ‘objective conditions’ of rebellion, more engaged in retribution and survival. The Maoists’ duress is manifold. Among other things, they appear to be increasingly hard-pressed to communicate issues. There is a core hard-Left-leaning pool in urban India that will continue to provide recruits for on-ground action and eventual, ideological leadership. As ever this core is driven by angry intellectualism, and can move easily, generationally, from farmers’ rightsrelated land issues prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s to, say, land-related issues of tribal rights, and callous, often-corrupt land acquisition for various projects.

History

The term Naxalites comes from Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, where a section of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) led by Kanu Sanyal,and Jangal Santhal initiated a violent uprising in 1967. On 18 May 1967, the Siliguri Kishan Sabha, of which Jangal was the president, declared their support for the movement initiated by Kanu Sanyal and readiness to adopt armed struggle to redistribute land to the landless. The following week, a sharecropper near Naxalbari village was attacked by the landlord’s men over a land dispute. On 24 May, when a police team arrived to arrest the peasant leaders, it was ambushed by a group of tribals led by Jangal Santhal, and a police inspector was killed in a hail of arrows. This event encouraged many Santhal tribals and other poor people to join the movement and to start attacking local landlords. These conflicts go back to the failure of implementing the 5th & 9th Schedules of the Constitution of India. See Outlook India comment by E.N. Rammohan ‘Unleash the Good Force’ - edition July 16, 2012. In theory these Schedules provide for a limited form of tribal autonomy with regard to exploiting natural resources on their lands, e.g. pharmaceutical & mining), and ‘land ceiling laws’, limiting the land to be possessed by landlords and distribution of excess land to landless farmers & labourers. The caste system is another important social aspect of these conflicts.

Mao Zedong provided ideological leadership for the Naxalbari movement, advocating that Indian peasants and lower class tribals overthrow the government and upper classes by force. A large number of urban elites were also attracted to the ideology, which spread through Charu Majumdar’s writings, particularly the ‘Historic Eight Documents’ which formed the basis of Naxalite ideology. In 1967, Naxalites organized the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR), and later broke away from CPM. Violent uprisings were organized in several parts of the country. In 1969, the AICCCR gave birth to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI(ML)). Practically all Naxalite groups trace their origin to the CPI(ML). A separate offshoot from the beginning was the Maoist Communist Centre, which evolved out of the Dakshin Desh group. The MCC later fused with the People’s War Group to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). A third offshoot was that of the Andhra revolutionary communists, mainly represented by the UCCRI(ML), following the mass line legacy of T. Nagi Reddy, which broke with the AICCCR at an early stage. During the 1970s, the movement was fragmented into disputing factions. By 1980, it was estimated that around 30 Naxalite groups were active, with a combined membership of 30,000.